SharePoint Online Sites, Lists, Libraries and Permissions
View All Tags
When a group of people needs to look at a SharePoint site but not change it, give them Read. On a communication site, Share site does it in one panel: it adds the group to the site's Visitors group, which holds the Read permission level.
Maya Patel typed 07/11/2026, 7 November, into a date and time field on a SharePoint site set to UK dates. SharePoint saved 11 July 2026. The date-only field in the same form, typed the same way, got 7 November, and a colleague doing exactly the same got 7 November everywhere. Picking the date from the calendar instead of typing it fixed the entry.
Every screen and flow of the Overtime Timesheet app reads or writes three things in SharePoint: a list of departments and their approvers, a list of overtime entries, and a library for payroll's monthly workbooks. This part builds them, and the site they live on, column by column and setting by setting.
To add a row to a SharePoint list by hand, select + New, fill in the New item form and select Save. It's how you add the first few items to a list that an app will read, such as its settings or its reference data.
A SharePoint library's name does two jobs at creation: it's the name people see and the start of its web address. Spaces in the name become %20 in the address. The way round it is to create the library without spaces and rename it afterwards: the name changes, the address doesn't.
A document library is where a SharePoint site keeps files, the way a list keeps rows of data. Every site starts with one, Documents, but a library of its own lets a set of files have their own permissions and their own place. It takes a minute to create.
Column settings can check one column at a time. List validation checks a whole item when it's saved, so it can compare columns: a finish after its start, an end date after a begin date, a discount below the price. If the formula isn't TRUE, SharePoint refuses the item and shows your message.
Every SharePoint list starts with a Title column. When your list has its own columns for what Title would hold, hiding Title keeps the view and the form clean. It takes two separate steps: one for the list view, one for the item form.
Some values must appear only once in a list: a department name, an employee number, an order reference. Enforce unique values makes SharePoint refuse a second item with the same value, whoever enters it.
A column's name says what it is; its description says what to put in it. SharePoint shows the description right under the field in the item form, so it's the cheapest help text a list can have. It's optional, and worth writing for every column.
